Does anyone know about manure tea?

[ranchhand]

I used a variation of this method with my chicken poop. I had the wood chips and the poop mixed together, after a coop clean out. I put the chips in a barrel, with holes drilled in the bottom. I put the barrels in the garden (up on bricks) for the winter. The snow and rain washed the poop through the wood chips, very slowly. I moved the barrels around a couple of times, just to distribute the fertilizer. I think it worked out pretty well. You could speed the process up, by watering the barrels, if you were inclined... Enjoy!

Lesa, that is a great idea! DH is a commercial painter, so we have dozens of 5 gallon buckets around. And the chickens produce plenty of manure tea, when I clean the coop, forget the bucket and it rains that night.

That's what we'll be doing next winter, thank you!

 

[davaroo]

The cool thing about water is it stops the breakdown of manure. Normally, as manure dries out, the nitrogen in it is flashed off as ammonia nitrate gas. But when held in solution in water, more of it is available to the plants.